Re: Poor Performance

Hello,

I can't believe I forgot to include that. Jeez, I'm sorry. I have a Sapphire R9 280, with the latest drivers from here and yes, I uninstall previous drivers before installing the new ones. And I meant I installed the latest drivers for my CPU in case that might be a problem (it was mostly a test), which I downloaded here.

I monitored temps and it was all fine, no horrible temps or anything. I will try going into the Crimson software and toggling the shader cache off next (it is on) but to answer your question, no, I do not have an SSD. I know loading times are better on SSDs but I have never encountered loading like this before. It would be pretty crazy if a console had a better HDD (7200RPM) than I do, too. haha

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@Dorzalty wrote:

Hello,

I can't believe I forgot to include that. Jeez, I'm sorry. I have a Sapphire R9 280, with the latest drivers from here and yes, I uninstall previous drivers before installing the new ones. And I meant I installed the latest drivers for my CPU in case that might be a problem (it was mostly a test), which I downloaded here.

I monitored temps and it was all fine, no horrible temps or anything. I will try going into the Crimson software and toggling the shader cache off next (it is on) but to answer your question, no, I do not have an SSD. I know loading times are better on SSDs but I have never encountered loading like this before. It would be pretty crazy if a console had a better HDD (7200RPM) than I do, too. haha

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Those CPU drivers you mentioned are actually graphics drivers. Intel processors have built-in graphics chipsets (for people without a graphics card), but since you have a dedicated graphics card, there's no need to install that. It might actually be interesting to find out if the game is running on the AMD GPU or on the Intel chipset. Normally that doesn't happen when you have an AMD GPU, but if for some reason the game is running on the Intel chipset, that would explain the symptoms. Make sure your monitor is plugged into the graphics card and not directly to the motherboard.

Concerning the hard drive, I'm just brainstorming ideas and it's probably not the cause of the issues you're having, especially because the current-gen consoles have pitiful 5400 RPM hard drives..

Hello,

I thought the iGPU drivers could be called "CPU" drivers too. hehe my bad. My monitor is plugged into my GPU, and all of my games run off it as well. Just to be sure, I downloaded an emulator called Dolphin and checked to see if it was picking up my card, and it is.

Oh, yea, I know. That was mostly me just finding it funny if it turned out my HDD was the culprit and was worse than a console. I would have been so disappointed. 😞

I finished the changes in the software. I turned it off, ran my game and it didn't seemed to change anything. However, since you made it seem like turning it off or on could help, I decided to turn it back on. This time the first boot into the game happened with a few seconds! And then booting into my game takes only two minutes now! It didn't seem to fix the performance issues much at all, though it did stop the freezing (remained in low fps). So I googled and googled for any kind of solution, and found that someone said they fixed their problem by editing this file:

package.mft

In this location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition\Update\Patch

Mine was 12, so I changed it to 13, loaded game (problem still there), turned it off and then edited the file back so that it said "version 12" again. Saved it and reloaded....and viola! Performances fixed! Loading screens aren't unbearably long! Game is smooth at 40-50FPS at high-ultra settings!

Now I know this isn't important as I got my fix but may I ask what shader cache is and why it solved the problem? Also, do you think this fix might work with BF3/4 (I need to install them again to test)?

Thanks once again! :eahigh_file:

I'm not sure what the shader cache is but it's supposed to make games load faster, except that doesn't always work. I only thought of it because someone suggested it to me once when I was having graphical issues, but it turned out to be a separate issue.

Battlefield 3 and 4 run on the same engine, so this fix may also work on those games.

Yesterday I launched DAI and interestingly, I had the exact same issue with regards to long load times. Disabling the shader cache fixed it for me.

I will definitely report this to AMD.

Edit: I will not report this to AMD after all. When disabling the shader cache, I reduced my load times to the Hinterlands from too damn long to 30 seconds. Now I have done a clean installation of the 16.2.1 driver and with the shader cache enabled, I reduced it further to 20 seconds. It seems AMD drivers can get a bit random with DAI performance.

Could it be a case by case issue? Just to be thorough, I am going to uninstall my drivers and jump back one or two. If the problem is gone, might be just the drivers that is the issue and turning and re-enabling the shader cache fixed something within it?

I'll edit or make a post with the outcome.